Yesterday, the Supreme Court in the UK ruled that the legal definition of ‘a woman’ is based on biology, and biology alone. Not self-identification. Not gender recognition certificates. Not even gender reassignment surgery. What about intersex folk? Er, don’t know. What about non-binary folk? Forget about it.
The TERFs are celebrating. Champagne outside the High Court. Finally, they think, they can be sure about who is using the women’s bathrooms. Safe at last. Phew.
Where does this leave us?
Prisons, sports teams, toilets, refuges, women’s services, single-sex schools. All of these can now legally exclude trans and non-binary folk.
Clarity at last. We all know where we stand.
My mind is spinning.
I was born in 1972, and I came out as queer in 1989.
We had no legal rights. Seriously.
There was no legal protection in work. Employers could fire LGBTQ people from their jobs. People could be evicted from their homes. Section 28 was in force from 1988 until 2003 which meant that schools and other local authority funded services could not ‘intentionally promote homosexuality’. Gay folk could not be out if they were in the army. The age of consent for having sex was still at 21 for gay men (with nothing for gay women). Lesbian and gay people could not apply to adopt children, could not get married. There were no civil partnerships. Homophobia was rife in the media, in TV, in politics, in the church. Queer bashing was everywhere, and we were often not protected by the police. Blah blah blah. Life was tough. No wonder we had our own communities, places where we could feel safe, places where we were accepted for who we were.
And that was just the queer side.
Women were also in a shit situation. The Sex Discrimination Act 1975 was in existence, but there were still so many problems with unequal pay, the glass ceiling, outright sexism, maternity rights, lack of affordable childcare, access to health services. The laws about domestic violence, rape, and child abuse were all biased against women, all favouring men and male power. Fuck, it was bad.
The law was not the answer. The law was so limited in what it could do to help us. In fact, it actively hindered us. It denied us our rights in so many spheres of life.
I have never really believed that the law could help me. I haven’t relied on it. I have been on the wrong side of the law in so many ways. Actively discriminated against. Invisible. Marginalised.
As marginalised people, turning to the law for protection is one strategy – and many activists have spent a long time fighting to change legislation so that we have more legal rights – but it is not the only one.
Legislation often follows a change in public opinion, not the other way round.
The law didn’t help trans and non-binary people yesterday. It was a blow to so much progress that has been made.
But the legal system is only one part of our lives.
When the Equalities Act 2010 was introduced, it was a radical change from the era before this time. An attempt to bring all the previous equalities law under one umbrella. It named and gave legal protection to people who had never had this before. Protected characteristics. Wow. I fitted into a few of these categories. I had legal protection. Finally. In that way, it really was astonishing. Life before the Equalities Act, and life after the Equalities Act.
Remember the case of the gay folk who wanted a wedding cake, and a Christian bakery refused to make it? It went to court, and the gay folk won. This is fucking unbelievable. It’s hard to describe how different that was from what was happening just a few years before.
But in terms of defining ‘men’ and ‘women.
The law is not going to help us here. Not yet anyway.
The Supreme Court was never going to make a different ruling. It would have been impossible.
The legal system is based on a misunderstanding of the binary nature of gender. We know that. Most of the systems and processes in society are based on this foundation, and we now know, that this foundation is wrong. Gender is not binary. But widespread acceptance of this is relatively recent, and our legal system is outdated.
The Supreme Court had its lens, and it had no real choice. To make a different ruling yesterday would have torn up decades of legislation, of legal understanding. They could only work within the framework that they understand, the foundation that they are based on.
It was never going to be different.
We need to forget about the law. For now, anyway.
Let’s take things into our own hands.
By this, I mean that there is no law that says that a refuge can’t be open to women, to trans women and to non-binary folk. There is no law that says that establishments can’t make their own decisions about who is able to access them. There is no law that says that they must discriminate. That is their choice. They choose where they stand. If they want to be ‘women-only’, then they can state this, and legally, we now know how this is defined. But they can also be overtly inclusive. They can say what they believe, what they value. They can take this as an opportunity to stand up, to stand out, to be bold, to make a statement about smashing up the gender binary.
This is about us all taking the power and living our politics out loud.
It’s time for us to ask people to be more upfront about who they welcome into their spaces.
I want to choose the places that welcome me and that recognise my gender identity. So please tell me if you welcome me in your space. Put up a Pride Flag or a Trans Flag. Write a statement for your website. Wear a t-shirt which makes your politics visible to me. Let’s bring back the badges and stickers that adorned our jackets in the 1980s – they were always pretty cool anyway. A signal of solidarity.
I want to choose friends who accept me as I am. I can only do this if you live your life out loud, if you tell me who you are and what you value. Don’t make me guess. I am tired of reading between the lines. I need to know.
I want to work in places which actively support me. I want to know that I can be visible, that I am welcomed. I don’t want to be ‘tolerated’. I want to be seen as an asset, as part of the vibrancy of an organisation. Bring me in, don’t push me out to the margins.
Fuck the law. Fuck the legal definitions. We have more power than that.
Tell me who you are, tell me what you think. Show me that you want me to be part of your world.
Make spaces accessible by actively labelling them as open to women, trans and non-binary folk. Don’t make people guess. Don’t make us assume. Don’t make us ask. Don’t make us go to fucking court.
Speak your values out loud.
Fuck the law.
Take back the power.